Midlander traces roots back to Mayflower

Victoria Ritter vritter@mdn.net

Published
6:00 am EDT, Saturday, May 12, 2018

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Midlander traces roots back to Mayflower

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In 1620 Stephen Hopkins boarded the Mayflower with his family and set sail for the New World. Nearly 400 years later, one of his direct relatives was inducted into the General Society of Mayflower Descendants. Thanks to a ledger dating back to the 19th century, Gwen Breault, of Midland, was able to prove that her lineage led back to Hopkins.

Breault’s journey began when she was looking through old family photographs. In her interest to keep names and dates straight, she decided to start documenting how her relatives were related and when they lived.

“I liked my mom’s old pictures,” she said. “To keep track of whose mother’s mother’s father was, I had to start writing it down.”

In addition to using Ancestry.com and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ genealogy organization FamilySearch, Breault reached out to the General Society of Mayflower Descendants. There she discovered a missing link that would connect her great-great-grandfather, Curtis Kempton, to a Mayflower descendant

“Nobody in the Mayflower Society could prove that Curtis Kempton was the child of Mehitabel because they had moved from one city to another.”

Breault soon remembered a family ledger that her mother kept in a trunk that belonged to Kempton in the 1800s. Her grandfather had kept accounts of the household spending while his children used the back pages for penmanship practice. On one of the last pages were the lines that would change everything: “Curtis T. Kempton, the son of Jonathan & Mehitable Kempton, was born in Franklin County, Farmington Township, State of Maine in the year one thousan (sic) eight hundred and twenty-four.”

“They accepted this as proof so then I was able to connect with them and that brought me to the Mayflower,” Breault stated.

From there Breault was able to confirm that she’s directly related to not one but two voyagers on the Mayflower, Hopkins and his daughter, Constance.

“He’s the most colorful of all of them,” Breault commented.

Born in 1581 in Hampshire, England, Hopkins led an exciting life even before he boarded the Mayflower. In 1609 he joined the crew of the Sea Voyage bound for Jamestown, Virginia, was a castaway in Bermuda and participated in a failed mutiny against the governor Sir Thomas Gates before safely arriving at his destination in 1610. Hopkins returned to England when he received word that his wife, Mary had died in 1613. He reunited with his children – including Constance – and married Elizabeth Fisher before taking his on the Mayflower in 1620. In America Hopkins acted as an ambassador to the Native Americans as well as got into trouble selling alcohol in his later years before dying in 1644.

With the proof in her hands, Breault sent in copies of the ledger to the state historian of the General Society of Mayflower Descendants along with her application. Over a year later, on Oct. 13, 2017, she was accepted into the Society. The knowledge that her family lineage is recorded for future generations is enough for Breault.

“It’s just the satisfaction that the lineage is preserved forever for my family,” she said.